Cinemas de estreia e cinemas de bairro em Lisboa (1924-1932)

The growing number of «neighbourhood cinema halls» in Lisbon created new reception habits and contributed to the progressive massification of the movies in the late twenties, early thirties. This process was perceived as a threat to the spatial and social priority of the première cinema halls in the city «centre». For that reason, the contemporary trade press contains many depreciative descriptions of the «neighbourhood cinema halls». Always comparing them to the première halls, in ways akin to the journalistic sub-gender of the reports on Lisbon’s bas-fonds, those descriptions descriptions created an image of the audiences from the cinema halls more distant from the Baixa-Chiado area as popular, riotous, and old-fashioned. At the same time, the city «centre» reinforced its status as the city’s cultural, commercial and entertainment centre.